Peņa, whose name adorned the airport's main access road, had by this point moved on: his reward for kickstarting the boondoggle was a cabinet appointment, first as Clinton's secretary of transportation, then as secretary of energy. Every new mishap at DIA became another stick for conservatives to use on Clinton's back — and deservedly so: Peņa wasn't fit to run a shoeshine stand, much less a major infrastructure project, much more less a metropolitan area. And when he, like seemingly all of Clinton's cabinet appointments, ran into ethics problems over (what else) a shady land deal, the picture of Democratic governance was complete: DIA — Denver's Invisible Airport. Democrats in Action.
About this time the driver pointed out DIA's newest feature, a 30-foot tall sculpture of a rearing horse, bright blue in color — a piece that took, according to the Rocky Mountain News, "Sixteen years, four missed deadlines, two lawsuits and one death" to deliver. The death was the sculptor's, killed while finally assembling the sculpture when a hitch broke and the mustang's Brobdingnagian torso came tumbling down on top of him. For the city, this may almost have come as a blessing: Jimenez had failed to meet every deadline up to that point. Once the sculpture was out of escrow, the city picked it up and had it repaired and installed, at a cost of $350,000 on top of the initial $300,000 grant. But because it was, obviously, Jimenez's last work, the sculpture is now valued (this according to the driver) around $2 to 3 million.
Thus also Denver International Airport. It cost too much, it was held up for ages, and the parts never seemed to fit together right. However, it's now the 11th-busiest in the world, and up near the top in the on-time standings. Sure, the baggage system proved incorrigible, and the airport switched in 2005 to having manual laborers, rather than electric belts, hurl your bags and break your memorabilia. And of course there remains the vigorous, corrupt circlejerking that has marked every large-scale public works project since the Romans accidentally invented concrete. But if this is Democrats In Action, say this for them: once they take their slice, at least there's something left behind — if only because they're too busy bitching amongst themselves to snatch it all. Thus, too, Clinton: his (wife's) plan for a grandiose social-statist makeover of the U.S. came to naught; even with a majority in both houses and a kindly-disposed Supreme Court, they couldn't make universal health care or much of anything else stick (at least, nothing that couldn't be gotten out with a little club soda).
The driver pulled to the curb and grabbed the bags, I thanked him for the ride and the talk. I'd cut it close getting here, but figured the lack of traffic and travelers on Memorial Day would balance it out. At the ticket counter, they told me they could just get my bag on and I could just make it, if I hustled on down to sec — hmm. Well. Let's see what else we've got heading to Tulsa today!
The reason for this about-face was a couple of letters on my boarding document that meant I would be routed through one of the other lines at security. In my heart of hearts, I was hoping I'd get sent through the brand-new toy, the machine reported in the Denver Post of a few days earlier. I say reported, but advertised might be more apt: there's something about the mix of technology and violations of the Constitution that really sets media-syndicate hearts a-flutter — and when the machine is designed to nude X-ray everyone who goes through it, the way sunglasses in comic books promised half a century ago, other body parts might start fluttering, too. But, alas, I was routed to the puffer; after I had cleared that and the usual shoes-belt-liquids-laptop checkpoint, and had presented my papers and possessions to the bag-swabber, I passed the time pondering our reactive, overreactive security protocols. One moron with wires sticking out his shoe gets through: years later, we know to remove them without being told. One chemically improbable plot to produce, en route, liquid explosives out of unstable ingredients, is detected: a couple years on, and three-ounce plastic bottles are still the travel accessory of choice.
How soon will it be, I wondered, until we will be asked to provide spit, hair, or blood in order to board our cloudhopping commuter flights? (After all, we're already allowed to extract blood by force at traffic checkpoints.) And what would happen if there was another actual disaster, say, someone detonating a truck bomb at the ticket counters? Would airports be locked down, garrisoned by U.S. troops newly freed from posse comitatus? Where would it end?
It wouldn't, I thought. New steps would keep getting added, while the old ones remained — if the torso falls off the statue why, just keep strapping new ones in there. Eventually we'll either find one that fits, or we'll run out of sculptors. And keep tossing those bags on the conveyor belts — sure, they'll never get to the passengers at the destination, but maybe one of them will fly off and hit a truck-bomber terrorist. It's not a failure, it's a feature!
At last I got my bags back and pulled off to the side to reorganize everything that had gotten mussed up, before strolling leisurely to the gate my new flight would leave from three hours later. I surveyed the building around me, and the TSA gauntlet behind me, and found myself thinking more kindly about DIA, and especially about the big blue horse. Hate it or love it, at least it's there, being noticeable without really bothering anyone. Not asking you questions, not stealing your consumer electronics. Not sniffing your shoes, not taking pics of you naked . . . what's that? Yes, of course, here's my license and passport right here. As you can see, I am licensed for both intrastate and state-to-state travel. Oh, no, no, no problem at all. No, thank you — have an excellent day, sir! — Andrew Ferguson
